Erdan: No concrete outcome from Rio+20 summit

Israeli delegation, technology well received at Brazilian sustainability conference.

Gilad Erdan 370.
(photo credit:Screenshot)

While pleased with the performance of the Israeli delegation at the two-week
global sustainability summit, Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan said
he was disappointed that the conference itself had no concrete outcome.

A
66-member Israeli delegation has just returned from the Rio+20 United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – two-weeks of
negotiations, workshops and meetings, which culminated in a high-level
conference from June 20 through June 22. It marked two decades since the
original 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, as well as the 10th
anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg.

All in all, about 50,000 people attended Rio+20, including
130 heads of state, and about $513 billion was pledged toward sustainability
projects. At the conclusion, a Rio Declaration – called The Future We Want – was
signed by the participating nations, but lacked tangibility and clarity,
according to the ministry.

“We are gathered here in Rio at a historic
crossroads,” Erdan had said in his own plenary address at the summit on
Thursday. “We are here to make history, by shifting to a new economic paradigm
and achieving sustainable development. We all know that if we continue on the
same path, a gloomy future awaits us.”

Selected as vice chairman of the
conference, Erdan led an entire plenary session that day, where he invited many
speakers – including the Turkish and Lebanese prime ministers – on stage to
speak.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati had particularly negative
things to say about Israel in his speech, Erdan told The Jerusalem Post on
Tuesday.

But despite many attempts, the PA was not able to achieve
state status at the summit and remained an official observer, due in large part
to the efforts of the United States and Canada, according to
Erdan.

Moreover, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad addressed the
summit, the entire delegations from Israel, Canada, Australia, the US and many
European nations left the hall, ministry officials said.

In his own
speech, the environmental protection minister emphasized that Israel has “spared
no efforts to share [its] unique experience with both developed and developing
countries,” including its neighbors, and he highlighted the amount of water that
Israel continues to supply to both the West Bank and Gaza, above and beyond its
requirements.

“We have just heard our neighbors speak here, at this very
podium, about the development challenges that we all face,” Erdan said in his
speech. “I had hoped that their message would not be politicized. I was
surprised, or maybe not, that they did not miss the opportunity to once again,
politicize a professional forum on issues that do not belong here.”

Erdan
called upon the Palestinian leaders to join him in seizing “the opportunity to
meet our common development challenges and seek to overcome them, together,
regardless of our differences,” and he asked that they implement 28 water
upgrade projects that he had approved.

The bulk of his speech, however,
did not refer to political issues and instead focused on the importance of
promoting green economies around the world – basing economic decisions on
factors beyond GDP.

Outside the conference itself, the Israeli delegation
held successful side events on water and sustainable agriculture, as well as a
Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund learning workshop on forestation.
In addition to these events, Erdan held several bilateral meetings, specifically
with officials from the Czech Republic, Guatemala and Germany, and he also met
with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Gush Dan area’s
wastewater purification system, which combines soil aquifer treatment and
nanofiltration to create reusable water for agriculture, received praise in a
Global Environment Outlook- 5 pamphlet, unveiled prior to the high-level summit
by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and ICLEI – Local Governments
for Sustainability.

“Everyone spoke about Israel as one of the world
leaders of water technologies and sustainable agriculture,” Erdan told the
Post.

Most disappointing to Erdan and his ministry was The Future We Want
declaration, signed at the conclusion of Rio+20 on Saturday. Israeli
representatives had taken a very active role in the negotiations leading up to
the signing of the document, which began six months before, ministry officials
said.

The document, according to the ministry, called for the
establishment of a universal, intergovernmental high-level political forum on
sustainable development, to convene by the beginning of the 68th session of the
UN General Assembly in 2013. Meanwhile, a working group to deal with the same
issues would convene no later than the commencement of the 67th session of the
General Assembly, in 2012, and would provide a sustainable development proposal
to the assembly by the next session.

Strengthening the global role of
UNEP as the worldwide environmental authority was also critical to the document,
as was recognizing the importance of measures beyond GDP to define
progress.

A 10-year framework plan on sustainable consumption and
production was also adopted in the declaration – a plan that had been initiated
in Rio+10 in Johannesburg and whose programs remain voluntary.

In terms
of official development assistance, the document also asked developed countries
to achieve a target of 0.7 percent of gross national product for ODA to
developing countries by 2015, as well as target of 0.15% to 0.2 % of GNP for ODA
to the least developed countries. The document also emphasized the importance of
transferring technology to developing countries.

Despite some positive
features, the declaration contained many disappointing elements, primarily the
lack of “concrete action” and sufficient ambition, with “no real action, no
targets, no timelines,” according to the ministry.

In exact opposition of
these contentions, which have been echoed by critics around the globe, Rio+20’s
secretary-general, Sha Zukang, had said that the summit was “about
implementation and concrete action,” at a press conference on June
22.

Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East,
reiterated the criticisms, noting that the conference “failed because
governments used the event as a marketing exercise rather than a convening to
advance on earlier political commitments made.”

“Due to the poor level of
deliberations from earlier preparatory meetings, it was so clear to Friends of
the Earth Middle East that Rio+20 would be a failure that we decided that it
would be a waste of money to even attend,” Bromberg said.

Environmental
Protection Ministry officials also argued that the definitions of green economy
in The Future We Want document were not precise enough, and instead of focusing
on what green economy should really be, it simply focused on what it should not
be. The declaration also lacked a process to end subsidies on fossil fuels, as
well as mentions of sexual or reproductive rights of women, the ministry
charged.

Overall, the document and the summit’s biggest achievement was
the decision to plan more conferences in the future, according to ministry
officials.

“It was important to have the event because it did put
sustainable development on the agenda and many countries are developing their
own domestic plans – like we did up to Copenhagen and what we’re doing now with
the green growth,” Erdan told the Post. “But the document is quite disappointing
because there are no specific dates or numbers – it’s not concrete
enough.”

The process of agreeing on such a document is “very difficult,”
a ministry official said, noting that by including 193 states with vastly
varying agendas, it would have been nearly impossible to achieve more than the
negotiating parties did at this point.

“Unfortunately, the global
economic crisis is making it harder for the Western countries to initiate new
financial incentives to invest in protecting the environment and transferring
money to developing countries,” Erdan said. “Of course some of the western
countries use it as an excuse, but we cannot ignore that there is an economic
crisis in many countries.”

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